Re: contrib/pg_filedump - PostgreSQL File Dump Utility

> > We'd prefer BSD, though. The existing contrib modules that are
> > GPL-licensed snuck in there by virtue of people not paying attention.
>
> Understood and from a Steering Committee perspective it makes
> sense to attempt to have all code associated with the project
> under one license.
>
> However this contribution is part of another project, the Red Hat
> Database Project, that uses GPL as its license. All tools and
> utilities that we are developing including the Administrator,
> Browser and Visual Explain will be issued under GPL (where possible).
>
> All work performed by the RHDB development team on PostgreSQL
> proper falls under the existing PostgreSQL license(s).

At first I thought this linked into the main PostgreSQL backend code,
but actually it just reads tuple lengths, and optionally dumps out the
data in hex. There doesn't seem to be any _smarts_ in reading the tuple
information, so its linkage to the backend its limited to pg_crc.c.
I don't see an issue with that linkage because if Patrick's code is GPL
anyway, linking to a BSD file doesn't change the nature of GPL at all.
I is only BSD linking to GPL code that changes the code to GPL. If it
is already GPL, I don't see an issue.

A larger issue is that this code wants to be in contrib. I don't see
any other GPL code in contrib. I see pgcrypto using an LGPL library(?),
and our odbc is LGPL'ed, and I can even find a mention of Peter Mount
not including retepPDF because it was LGPL'ed. Now, I don't think it is
an issue because retepPDF had other questionable issues Peter mentioned,
but it does show that contributors have tried to be consistent with our
current license.

I guess I am concerned about going down the slippery slope where people
have to scour the source tree and study every licensed piece.

I know we have LGPL in our code. I don't know how different that is
from the BSD license, and whether adding pure-GPL code into our tree is a
wise move.

Patrick, are the other projects you mentioned destined for our source
tree too? --- Administrator, Browser and Visual Explain

One unusual issue is that our python interface library is described as
GPL-like. What does that mean? I don't see any actual license
description. I am CC'ing the author.

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